Earlier in the week some welding in the Technology area tripped the fire alarms and students were outside for a brief period while the issue was resolved.
No flames… even smoke. Just an odor that permeated the HS and alarms sensitive enough to signal the event.
Just a minor inconvenience? Well, yes, those are the facts. The fiction: Facebook via cellphones at the ready.
While students waited, they hit the cell network and flooded the popular social networking site with “fire at waltob schol we are standing out in the rain”, followed by comments, “like actually fire fire….?” Have some “harmless” fiction.
Harmless? Hardly. HS Principal Dengler sent out a Global Connect phone/e-mail alert to HS parents noting the incident and reason for the evacuation. FACT.
We’ve given away our privacy and traded it in for cyber-gossip: innuendos that are often misleading,
provoking and hurtful. In an era of converging technologies, where “publishing” information is just a few smartphone keys away, too many have given into pushing misinformation to the masses–the kind of information that too often blows up on us because we type/text too fast and rarely pause to think and reflect. In a digital world, reflection is OUT, reaction is IN.
As educators, establishing programs to strengthen “Digital Citizenship” among our youth – the informed, sensible use of technology – is no longer an optional area of instruction. For our students and us, it’s a core issue.
